Review: Body of Lies

Like the recent “Traitor,” “Body of Lies” is a terrorist thriller sporting an American intelligence operative who speaks Arabic and deploys an inter-cultural sensibility. And, once again, the field operative has a stateside handler in a suit. Rotate Leonardo DiCaprio into the Don Cheadle role as the hands-on, on-the-ground agent, and bring in Russell Crowe in the role formerly occupied by Jeff Daniels. Like the old-school commander behind his desk corralling the renegade street cop, the Crowe and Daniels characters are used to set up dialogue with the DiCaprio and Cheadle characters on the proverbial bigger picture of how this messed up world really works. Screenwriter William Monahan here adapts reporter David Ignatius’ 2007 novel. As in “The Departed,” where DiCaprio played a deeply undercover mob infiltrator, Monahan again looks for serious stuff about tactical ethics and macho loyalty. For chases and bang-bang, director Ridley Scott (“American Gangster,” “Black Hawk Down”) supplies slick, fierce sequences shot in Morocco as fake Iraq. “Body of Lies” is far from a foreign policy seminar, but it’s unexpectedly on-message about nuance in mapping terror wars and intelligence networks. This otherwise acute drama of conscience falters, though, when the bad guys—and the writers—shamelessly leverage a romance with a nurse to trap a good guy. With Mark Strong, Golshifteh Farahani, Ali Suliman, Alon Aboutboul and Oscar Isaac. (Bill Stamets)